It was complete school sweep for NJ Macpherson Elementary school at the Grade 4 and 5 Super Soccer tournament. The youngest edition of the Super Soccer tournament saw 17 teams in the boys division and seven in the girls, including visiting teams from Ndilo and Bechoko, hit the turf at the Yellowknife
Fieldhouse over the May 11 weekend. The tournament's nine and 10 year old participants played up to seven games during the event.
"It was tough, but really fun and exciting," said Jen Therion, coach of the NJ Macpherson girls team. "I coached them last year too, the little ones, so I had most of the same players but some had moved on."
On their way to winning the banner, NJ Macpherson barely made it out of the round-robin winning three out of four games before being pushed to the brink in a semi-final shootout against St.
Joseph's Elementary School. After that it was a final match-up against Range Lake North that ended 4-3 in favour of the Scottie Dogs.
"We did well, we came home with the banner. We played six or seven games and we won all but one," said Therion.
On the boy's side of the action, it was the Grade 5 team from NJ that came home with the banner after a weekend that saw them win all of their games.
"I think we played three or four teams before semis and we had won all of them," said Helen Wong, the team's head coach.
The boys were pitted against Range Lake North teams in both the semi-final game and the final game before they were able to take the banner home.
"In the semis we played a really tight game against Range Lake and the boys did really well in the second half and we won 6-3. Then we played another Range Lake team in the finals," said Wong.
Each school was given the choice to decide if they wanted to submit separate teams between the grades or if they wanted to have one team for each division. NJ chose to have separate Grade 4 and
Grade 5 boys teams but submitted only one girls team because of a shortage of players.
NJ, Range Lake, St Joseph's, J.H. Sissons School, Mildred Hall Elementary School and Ecole Alain St-Cyr were joined in the tournament by Elizabeth Mackenzie Elementary and Chief Jimmy Bruneau School from Bechoko as well as Kalemi Dene School from Ndilo.
Grade 4/5 Super Soccer is the only opportunity for elementary school students to compete in inter-school sports as there is no Cager or Spike It tournaments until the middle school level.